


The Thorn Beneath the Rose

by fluffymusketeer



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Drabble, M/M, fairytale AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-09
Updated: 2019-04-09
Packaged: 2020-01-07 07:38:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,974
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18406115
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fluffymusketeer/pseuds/fluffymusketeer
Summary: In which Eren is a handsome prince trapped in a cursed tower… and Levi is Levi.Written for the Ereri Valentine's Day Exchange 2019.





	The Thorn Beneath the Rose

**Author's Note:**

> This was written for @ackermission on tumblr for the Ereri Valentine's Day Exchange. I realised today I forgot to post it on Ao3 so here ya go!

“Oh dear. There goes another one!”

The sight of a hapless knight far below, tossing weaponry and fleeing for his life from a spectral court jester, is — at this point — rather insulting.

Eren huffs and plucks yet another pearl from his increasingly threadbare doublet. “I thought this one would last a bit longer,” he grumbles. “And a court jester? Honestly!”

Armin hops out of his water bowl along the window ledge, leathery skin glistening in the dawn sun. He croaks in victory as Eren hands him the pearl. “Nightmares are manifestations of the unconscious mind, Eren,” he says. “There is no rhyme or reason to them. Didn’t you read that book Mikasa stole for you?”

Up in the rafters of the tower, Mikasa ruffles her silky black feathers in annoyance. “Of course he didn’t!” She snags a spider from its cobweb and gulps it down.

Eren tries not to gag.

He turns back to the window and rests his chin on his hands. At this rate, he’ll be stuck in this stupid old ruin of a tower forever.

The dark tangled forest below stretches as far as the eye can see, mists rising off the quagmires with the sun. Deceptively quiet, but Cursed to it’s rotten core, and Eren along with it. A prince trapped in a tower, a ruler without a realm, forced to watch countless brave knights battle their own nightmares to rescue him… and fail.

And worst of all, he’s down to four pearls. A perfectly good doublet ruined!

_That sneaky little toad._

The nightmarish apparitions are often amusing. Slithering snakes, giant cockroaches, sudden nakedness, and so on. But every now and again a knight comes along whose nightmares are something else altogether; the knight who was forced to confront their father’s fist, the knight who had to relive his parents’ murder… it is at such times when the cobwebbed old room at the top of the tower falls silent. Mikasa will flutter her wings and disappear through the hole in the roof, not returning for days. Armin will declare he’s off to the well, but really he’s just hiding his tears.

And always, Eren is left alone, the blackness in his heart growing, the despair threatening to drown him.

So when another knight appears at the edge of the woods the next day, his forest green standard hanging limply in the drizzling rain, Eren doesn’t have much hope. There’s a quality to the silence, as if the Curse knows it has found its next victim, and it’s going to be a juicy one.

“He’s a bit short for a knight,” Mikasa comments, preening her feathers.

Armin croaks in agreement.

“I have a bad feeling about this one,” Eren admits, shrinking into himself on the window seat.

“Uh oh,” Armin ribbits.

Eren can hardly bring himself to watch as the knight jumps down off his uneasy horse and removes his helmet to contemplate the swamp and it’s unnatural fog.

He has dark hair mussed up with sweat and rain. “Turn back,” Eren mutters under his breath. “I’m really not worth it.”

“I bet two sapphires from your mother’s brooch that he scarpers before reaching the footbridge,” Armin declares.

“One,” Eren counters, settling down for the show. “She was wearing that when she died, you monster.”

Armin holds up his little webbed foot and they delicately shake on it.

Eren can already sense the Curse coalescing, its tendrils snaking out towards the knight, reaching for his deepest fears. The knight draws his sword in anticipation.

“People?” Armin says, munching on a bug.

“Soldiers! They’re soldiers! Wait, what?” Eren leans forward.

He has never seen a knight with a fear of soldiers before. Dozens of them are forming, translucent foggy ghouls in the shape of a royal regiment. But why would a knight be scared of soldiers? They are all on the same side!

That does not stop the knight from stepping forth, planting his boots into the muddy thickets as he brings down his sword for the first time, slicing through the head of the nearest spectral soldier. Again… and again.

“Wow,” Armin croaks after a while.

Wow indeed.

“Hey, Mikasa, come look at this!”

“Damn it Eren, I’m a crow, not a lapdog.”

But Eren isn’t listening, unable to tear his eyes away from the knight cutting a swathe through the soldiers, unexpectedly agile even in armour. In the distance, a hiss of displeasure ripples through the dark forest.

The soldiers dissipate into a shower of droplets.

The Curse must try another tactic.

Mikasa flaps down to the window ledge, trying to act casual. Eren makes room for her, and the three of them watch as the knight pushes soot-black hair out of his eyes and scans the swamp.

“There!” Mikasa squawks, beak pointing  _behind_  the knight.

Armin is practically hopping on the spot. “It’s another person!”

And a tall one at that. Towering over the short knight, silent and deadly as only the mist can be (for the Curse may look harmless, but there are more than just physical wounds to be had in this forest).

The knight hasn’t seen, he hasn’t seen — “Look out!” Eren cries.

His voice, of course, is carried off by the Curse, away into the wind, but maybe it has some effect after all, for the knight goes rigid, and just in time he rolls away. The tall spectre’s arms grasp at nothingness, and the knight turns to face his newest foe.

And falters.

“No,” Eren whispers.

But the split second hesitation is all the spectre needs, and it envelopes the knight in a cloud of fog.

“Well, that didn’t last long.” Armin holds out a webbed foot. “Pay up, Eren.”

“I really thought this one seemed different,” Eren sighs, reaching for his brooch.

“Wait,” Mikasa says.

“Why?”

But Mikasa is right. The tall spectre is beginning to quiver, the mist struggling to keep its shape.  _He’s fighting it!_  Eren thinks, heart soaring.

It takes long minutes, but eventually, with a fatal downward stroke of his sword, the tall spectre is vanquished. The knight has gone pale, his forehead shiny with a cold sweat. He glances up at the tower and Eren can almost feel his grim determination. What brings you here? Eren is more intrigued by this knight than any other, wants somehow to climb down and urge him onwards.

The knight’s shoulders are hunched as he crosses the rickety footbridge. Eren smiles at Armin triumphantly.

Moments later, Eren’s smile vanishes.

The soldiers have reappeared.

This time they hold between them a woman. Her knees are forced into the mud, her long dress is torn and tattered, her long hair whips about in the wind. She may only be a ghostly apparition, but Eren can tell she is beautiful… and suffering.

As soon as the knight leaps into the fray with a cry, Eren knows. For he too lost a mother, many years ago. He knows that look, that shout of raw pain that rings out across the clearing.

He puts his head in his hands. “I can’t watch.”

Armin provides a running commentary. “Now he’s doing a sort of… kicky thing—”

“Roundhouse kick,” Mikasa interjects.

“Roundhouse kick. Oh, he just killed another one! He sure is flexible in that armour…”

“Oh dear,” says Mikasa.

“Oh no,” says Armin.

“What, what?!”

“The woman just drew a sword,” Mikasa informs him sombrely.

Eren curls in on himself, staring at the dark room he’s been trapped in for an age with naught but a crow and a toad for company. “I hate this Curse. I hate it.”

“Eren, I don’t think he can do it,” Armin says sadly.

“Of course not. It’s his mother. No one should have to kill their own mother.”

Things grow quiet. Eren can feel the Curse feeding itself with monstrous fear, growing thick and slimy, tangible in the rotting air. Armin and Mikasa are holding their breaths. He tries to send his strength to the knight.  _Take it and run_.

Quietly, Eren rises from the window seat, and goes to put his mother’s brooch away in the privy. It doubles as his meagre dressing room, where he keeps outfits which were once (before the moths and the mould got to them) fit for a prince.

“Eren!” Armin screeches.

“It’s alright, Armin, I’m used to it…”

“Eren,” Mikasa interrupts. “He’s done it.”

“What?!”

Eren trips back to the window, hardly daring to believe. There, down, down, down at the foot of the tower, at the door which only opens from the outside, stands the knight. For the briefest second, even at this distance, Eren could swear their eyes meet.

Then he opens the door.

“I— I— I need to change!” Eren darts for the privy.

Several minutes later, as he’s fumbling with the sapphire brooch, he hears the trap door creak open and footsteps in the room beyond. _Footsteps. In_  my  _tower!_

“Fucking hell,” a voice says, deep and annoyed.

Eren’s heart flutters. That sounds like a  _sexy_  voice! He takes one last glance in the cracked looking-glass, tosses his chestnut brown hair in what he hopes is an artfully dishevelled, princely kind of way, then he goes to announce himself.

“Good morrow, fair knight!” He’s practised this speech for years. “I, Eren of the House of Yeager, do formally congratulate you on your noble and heroic… ah… deed, and formally accept your rescue… and… now I shall proceed to… er, what are you doing?”

The knight puts down the dustpan and broom. “Who the fuck are you?” he snaps.

“I’m, um… Eren… of the House—”

“Yes, I heard you the first time. You look like a bloody pauper.”

Eren wilts.

“That damn four-eyed hedgewitch! She told me I’d find treasure at the top of this tower. Some treasure you are.”

“You’re… not my knight in shining armour?”

“Tch.” The knight (…probably not a knight) squints at Eren’s brooch. “Are those real sapphires?”

“It was my mother’s.”

“Oh.”

Armin curls protectively atop his hard-won pearls. Mikasa squawks indignantly. Eren sighs, despondent.

“Well, come on then.” The knight (mercenary, Eren supposes) puts his hands on his hips. “Maybe there’s some sort of reward I can claim for all this.”

“Wait… you’re still going to rescue me?”

“I’m not a complete asshole.”

“Well… thanks, I suppose.”

The knight (mercenary, asshole, whatever) rolls his eyes and holds the trapdoor open. Mikasa and Armin hitch a ride on Eren’s shoulders, all the way down, out of the tower, and across the swamp.

The Curse is grumbling in the background, but just like that, it lets them go.

“I’m Levi, by the way.”

Eren tests the name on his tongue. “Levi.” It feels nice.

“Alright, don’t wear it out.”

Levi’s horse whinnies excitedly when they reach it, prancing on its hooves and looking rather more spritely than Eren remembers horses being. Mikasa flies off in a huff, intent on using her own method of travel.

“Well?” Levi says, vaulting atop the horse. “Hop up.”

“Right,” Eren replies. “Right.”

Once he’s on the horse, after several undignified attempts, he doesn’t quite know where to put his hands. He flops them about, wishing he was a crow too.

“For god’s sake.” Levi takes Eren’s arms and wraps them around his waist. “Just hold on, your highness.”

“You’re really not what I expected.”

“That makes two of us.”

“Kind of cute though—” Eren claps a hand over his mouth in horror.

Levi glances back, sooty bangs falling over his eyes, and raises a sceptical eyebrow. “You’ve been in that tower a while, haven’t you brat?”

Eren nods slowly.

To his bewilderment, there is a blush creeping up Levi’s neck, where fine black hair meets pale skin. “Better hold on tight then,” Levi says gruffly, and kicks his horse into a gallop.

“Alright,” Eren whispers.

And neither of them look back.

**Author's Note:**

> Comments and kudos are appreciated <3


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